


and your heart says, "just stay"

by asinfastmovies



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asinfastmovies/pseuds/asinfastmovies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall and Zayn find the end of the road.</p><p>A roadtrip fic that skips the roadtrip: Niall and Zayn make it to the West Coast, meet Harry, Liam, and Louis, and build a home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and your heart says, "just stay"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beckoneveryone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckoneveryone/gifts).



> For [Taelor](http://www.beckoneveryone.tumblr.com): happy birthday!! This work takes place in a much larger universe that we've been discussing on-and-off since late 2012 and parts of it are more snapshots/outline than actual story, so I hope it's still enjoyable for others who read it!
> 
> Warnings for very brief mentions of recreational drug and alcohol use.
> 
> Standard disclaimers apply: I'm making no claim of ownership, this is entirely a work of fiction, etc.

They meet Harry within an hour of crossing the city limits. Well, Niall does, really. She goes into the coffeeshop and orders their drinks from a tall guy with deep dimples and a messy top knot while Zayn heads down to the riverfront to take pictures to send her family. When Zayn wanders in ten minutes later, smelling like smoke and with a faintly puzzled look on her face, Niall’s still talking to the Harry-the-barista, saying, “Yeah, of course, we’ll be there. Sounds fun!”

“Hey babe,” she directs this at Zayn, “Sorry for taking so long.”

They push their way outside, Niall calling a goodbye to Harry as they leave. Niall hands Zayn her iced mocha and Zayn takes a sip of it before asking, “What sounds fun?”

“Oh,” she says, “Harry invited us to a party later tonight.”

“He invited us or he invited you?”

Niall shrugs and takes a long drink of her iced tea, “I mean, I asked if my girlfriend could come too and he said, ‘the more the merrier,’ so. I’m assuming we got invited.”

Zayn lifts an eyebrow but all she says is, “Okay, cool.”

Niall grins and nudges her with an elbow, “Cool.”

~*~

Harry and his roommates live in a pretty two story with flower boxes in the windowsill on the outskirts of the neighborhood that surrounds the college. Zayn pinches Niall's hip when they walk into the living room and discover that the party is more housewarming than house party, but Niall’s response is cut off by Harry bounding up and hugging them in turn. When he pulls away from Zayn-who had looked surprised and gingerly patted him on the back-she smooths her hair away from her face and bites her lip, says, “Sorry we didn’t like, bring anything.”

Harry waves off her concerns though, leads them through the kitchen-where he pours them both drinks of some sort of fruity alcoholic punch-and introduces them to his roommates, Liam and Louis. 

Later, when the party is winding down, Niall finds Zayn in the living room sitting on the couch. Harry is on the floor resting his head against her knee and winding his way through a long, involved story and Zayn is nodding along absently and braiding tiny sections of Harry’s hair. 

On the drive back to the hotel Zayn says, loud against the quiet hum of the engine and the radio, “I had a really good time,” before nodding off against the window. 

~*~

The next morning they walk to the laundromat near their hotel. Niall starts a load of laundry and then drops into the chair next to Zayn. She wraps a hand around Zayn’s wrist to get her attention and says, “I’m going to go back to that coffee place and get some iced tea. Do you want anything?”

Zayn pulls her head out of the newspaper that she must’ve gone outside to buy when Niall wasn’t looking and says, “Yeah, a latte please?”

“Iced?” Niall asks and then glances a kiss to Zayn’s cheek when she “mhmm”s in response.

When she gets there, Harry greets her like an old friend. Niall gives him their order and leans with her elbows on the counter, watching him make the drinks. 

“Hey, listen,” Harry starts, looking over from where he’s manning the espresso machine, “We meant to ask you before you left but do you and Zayn want to come over for dinner tonight?”

Niall is surprised but pleased, says, “We’d love to, definitely. What time?”

When she gets back to the laundromat she hands Zayn her sweating cup and says, “We need to go pick up some french bread and bottle of wine, Harry invited us to dinner.”

~*~

They settle into a routine: they leave the hotel some time in the mid-morning and walk over to Harry’s coffeeshop. He works most days and eventually he starts having their drinks ready before they even get there. They wander around downtown, ducking into air-conditioned shops when the heat gets to be too much or something looks particularly interesting. Every few days they visit Liam at the diner where he works or see Louis when they’re picking up produce or canned food at the grocery store where he cashiers. Inevitably, they end up at Harry, Louis, and Liam’s for dinner. They’re at the point where Niall helps Harry in the kitchen or on the grill more nights than not and Zayn sits at the dining room table with Liam and Louis, playing cards and drinking the sun tea Harry makes everyday on their back deck. Niall used to join them but was banned after a particularly aggressive game of Spoons ended with her sitting on Louis’ back.

They’ve been in town almost two weeks, dragging their feet on where they’re headed next, when Niall realizes that she doesn’t actually want to leave.

She and Zayn are laying in bed that night, Niall curled up on her side and Zayn on her stomach, when Zayn says, almost a whisper, “Maybe we can’t decide where to go because we’re not ready to leave here yet?”

Niall locks her phone and tucks it under the pillow and she replies, just as quietly, “I think you’re right.”

~*~

They start looking for work and a place to live the next day. Liam gets Niall a job waitressing at the restaurant where he works as a line cook and Harry offers that the coffeeshop is looking for someone new, since Adrian left. Niall finds them a one-bedroom with a tiny backyard and an incomplete tree house at the edge of town and Louis offers to let them sleep on the sofa bed until they can move so they don’t have to keep wasting money at a hotel. 

The house is pretty much bare when they move in, so she and Zayn go to Goodwill to look for furnishings, then to Ikea for anything they don’t find there.

They have no air-conditioning and they spend the first two nights awake and sweating, lying on blankets on the floor because it’s cooler than the bed. The next day they go back to Goodwill and buy as many fans as they can find and to Walmart for box fans when those prove to not be nearly enough.

Some nights it’s still hovering in the low eighties when they go to bed, so they drag their duvet out to the tree house-which is really just a floor and supports-and watch the occasional cloud drift overhead and count stars until they fall asleep. 

Niall convinces Zayn to have sex out there one night when they’re both coming down from a high, whispering nonsense in her ear and kissing along her jaw until Zayn giggles and says, “Fine, fine!”

Niall’s just stoned enough that she keeps getting distracted, hiking Zayn’s dress up around her ribs and nosing at the curve of her tummy, biting at the insides of Zayn’s thighs until she whines and her hips jerk up like she can’t help it. Niall licks at Zayn through her underwear where they’re already starting to get wet and she can’t stop touching her, stroking Zayn’s hips, the backs of her knees, running her hands over the length of Zayn’s spread legs. She pulls Zayn’s panties almost off, leaving them hooked around one ankle so they don’t get lost out in the yard somewhere, and goes down on her until Zayn’s coming on her tongue, the muscles in Zayn's thighs going tight against her face.

~*~

Summer rolls into fall like it always does and the rainy season starts. Zayn swings by the diner sometimes at lunchtime, just so she can flirt with Niall while she works and kiss her behind the restaurant on her breaks, and she’s always there to pick Niall up at the end of her shift. 

Niall gets off work a half hour after Zayn on a Tuesday night and when she finally finishes up, she looks over to the counter and sees Zayn, chatting with Liam and drinking a half melted strawberry milkshake. Her hair is falling out of her high ponytail but her eyeliner is unsmudged and she looks beautiful in the low gold light.

Zayn looks up when Niall calls “hello” to Liam in the kitchen and sits down on the stool next to her. She smiles slow and tired and Niall badly wants to kiss her but she knows how Zayn feels about PDA in the workplace, so she grabs Zayn’s hand underneath the counter instead. She feels like doing something obnoxious, wrapping herself around Zayn’s shoulders or pulling her into her lap, asking her to get married right here, with Zayn in sensible shoes and a coffee-stained button-up and her in her second-best pair of black jeans, sweat dark in the armpits of her grey shirt.

The only occupied tables are a young couple in the front corner and a college age girl wearing headphones and with papers spread out in front of her. Outside it’s misting and Niall knows when they leave Zayn will halfheartedly press the hand not holding Niall’s to her bangs and complain about the weather and Niall will pretend she’s going to jump in a puddle and splash Zayn just to hear Zayn yelp and scold her. When they get home Zayn will change immediately into clean socks and a pair of sweats and grumble until Niall brings her heating pad out of the bathroom and wraps it around her feet. Niall will pull a blanket around both of them and they’ll watch a DVD until Niall gets hungry, and she’ll snuggle into the warm spot Zayn leaves on the couch while Zayn putters around the kitchen and looks for something to eat.

Niall ducks her face into Zayn’s shoulder there at the sticky restaurant counter to keep from saying how much she wants all that every day for the rest of her life, and hums when Zayn lets go of Niall’s hand to pet her hair gently. She rips Zayn’s straw wrapper to confetti and then moves to count her tips, organizing the wrinkled bills and watching out of the corner of her eye as Zayn licks the spoon that was resting in the dregs of her milkshake.

~*~

There’s a painted map of the United States pinned to the wall of their bedroom, floor to ceiling and corner to corner; Zayn had spent her free time that summer working on it with the windows thrown open and the door to the tiny spare room firmly closed. She presents it to Niall on a crisp October morning, a smear of blue along her jawline, her fingers tipped green, her cheeks flushed pink.

Zayn’s breath is hot against the back of her neck when she tells Niall that she can open her eyes. The mural is washed in light and it makes Niall gasp. There’s got to be a picture for every place they’d stopped on their way west, polaroids neatly taped to their locations on the map: there they are, arms around each other’s waist next to the Grand Canyon; Zayn kicking up dust on the side of an empty road in Texas after they’d spent the night in a wheat field, too far in either direction to a hotel; and one she’s never seen, of herself in profile with the sun setting on the beach out of focus behind her. Over their town is the picture they’d taken for their parents when they’d finally settled: Niall had asked Harry to take it and in the photo they’re holding hands, Niall on the step above Zayn with her legs stretched out and with her head ducked, laughing, and Zayn grinning up at her. They’re crooked in the frame and Niall remembers Harry worriedly saying, “I could do another one?” and Zayn replying, “No, this one is perfect. Thank you, Harry.” Next to the photo is a hand drawn compass point and the words, “you are here” in Zayn’s spiky handwriting.

Niall touches it gently and she can’t help her grin or the way she nearly tackles Zayn onto the bed so she can kiss her.

~*~

In November, it starts raining in earnest and Zayn cries the day she gets a package from home, two hand-knitted scarves and pairs of mittens, deep red for Zayn and blue-green for Niall. There’s an envelope at the bottom, with a note inside (“You mentioned how cold it’s been getting last time you called! I hope you and Niall are well. I love you. - Mom”) and a calling card (“Everyone misses you a lot, phone more often. Love, Dad”).

The next day Niall calls Zayn’s mom while Zayn’s at work and asks her if she will email Niall some recipes.

Zayn completely drenched that night when she gets home and she drops her wet clothes just inside the door like usual. Niall hears her before she sees her, coming in to the kitchen to wring her hair out over the sink.

Zayn’s stopped just at the edge of the kitchen, one hand on the door frame, still in her underwear and t-shirt. She gives Niall a watery smile when Niall gestures to the stovetop and says, cautiously, “Your mom said this was your favorite?”

Zayn’s cold, her arms covered in goosebumps when she wraps them around Niall’s shoulders, and Niall strokes a hand through the tangles of Zayn’s wet hair when she hugs her back.

~*~

The first day of December Niall charms their next door neighbor into letting them borrow a ladder and she makes Zayn hold the bottom while she strings lights around the beams of the porch, their breath fogging in the air. Zayn even grudgingly admits, when they’re done, that it looks really nice, and it’s even more beautiful after dark when they’re drinking hot chocolate out in the cold. 

Zayn lays her head on Niall’s shoulder, still awkwardly sipping from her mug, and they sit like that, under the sliver of a moon and with Niall’s arm around Zayn’s shoulders, until the clouds break open. 

~*~

She knows Zayn only very casually celebrates Christmas, so Niall appreciates it even more when Zayn spends a long night with her in the warmth of their kitchen, baking dozens of sugar cookies because that’s what Niall did with her family. Niall knows she’s being sloppy, frosting all over her face and arms, and she can’t help but grin when Zayn wrinkles her nose and says, “You’re a mess.” 

Zayn licks her thumb and wipes a smudge of icing off Niall’s nose. Niall dodges when Zayn tries to poke her in the belly and grabs Zayn by the wrist, sliding her hand until their fingers are laced together. She uses their linked hands to pull Zayn in and kisses her, giggling when Zayn’s hair gets in her mouth.

They end up with more cookies than they can eat and ultimately donate most of them to the cause that is Harry, Liam, and Louis’ holiday party.

Harry insists on a dress code-“Like Halloween, only instead of a costume you have to be wearing something festive or you can’t come in!” “Harry, we’re not turning people away for not wearing a dorky sweater” “I didn’t specify sweaters _Lewis_ ”-pouting until he gets his way. Niall buys them both reindeer antlers with bells on the ends, hers green, Zayn’s red. Zayn jingles cheerfully when she laughs at something Louis said and Niall grins when she reaches up self-consciously to straighten the headband and tuck her hair behind her ears.

Harry’s hung mistletoe in every doorway and Niall and him bump into each other as he’s exiting the kitchen and she’s entering. Harry looks vaguely awkward but Zayn is grinning when Niall showily throws her arms around his shoulders, going up on her tiptoes and smacking a kiss to his cheek.

Later, when they’re too tipsy to care, Zayn finds Niall where she’s stretched out in an armchair and talking to Liam and plops down in Niall’s lap. Niall automatically wraps her arms around Zayn’s waist and Zayn shifts so she can lay her hand on Niall’s cheek, tip her face, and kiss her. 

~*~

Niall wakes up in the middle of the night, somewhere between Christmas eve and Christmas morning, to the kind of quiet that can only mean snowfall. The sidewalk outside their front door is pale with it, and it’s still coming down, tiny flakes that Niall remembers her dad saying meant it was cold enough to stick, big flakes meant it was wetter and warmer and would be slush by morning. Zayn doesn’t even get mad when Niall nudges her until she opens her eyes, whispers, “Snow, Zayn, it’s snowing.” Niall bounces off the bed and whips Zayn’s scarf at her, jams a hat on her own head and her feet into her boots, and shifts impatiently while Zayn pulls sweatpants over her sleep shorts.

It’s bitter cold outside and the snow is a flurry in the beams of the streetlights, and it’s nearly silent, everything muffled and like they’re the only ones for miles. Zayn stands on the stoop while Niall stomps across the yard, leaving purposeful boot prints, and she fights back a smile when Niall flops down and makes a snow angel. Zayn’s cheeks are pink and her hair is a mess and she’s grinning and she looks beautiful in the weak light with her sleeves pulled over her hands and her arms crossed over her chest. When Zayn comes down the steps and towards Niall, she steps carefully in the boot prints Niall already left, looking down at her feet and hopping where Niall’s strides got especially long.

Niall’s chest feels too full all of a sudden and her fingers are freezing and she knows Zayn is going to hate her for it, but she tackles Zayn into the snow, hears her sputter, lets Zayn shove a handful of snow down the back of her shirt, until she feels like she can breathe again. Zayn’s nose is cold when Niall kisses her there, her mouth too, and Niall kisses her until the only sound is their breathing and the far off blare of a siren.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [Tumblr](http://www.lisafremonts.tumblr.com)!


End file.
